2nd_floor wrote on Sep 16, 2013, 23:08:I think gaming is not only about Windows vs. Mac vs. Linux anymore, but now the idea of the desktop computer itself, no matter what OS is on it, is now at risk. The living room is I think getting more and more popular. I can't imagine a time where desktop/enthusiast PCs are not common for gaming, but are sales and stats not showing the decline of the desktop for gaming, vs. whatever device in the living room?

actually there have been recent reports that have shown that desktop pc sales are actually in decline, but pc high end component sales are on the rise. The desktop is being transformed from a general use system for everyday users to more of an enthusiast machine.

nin wrote on Jun 22, 2013, 21:09:Am I missing a guild somewhere that shows what ship came with what KS pledge? I keep searching, but no luck so far...

Thank you!

It depends on how much you spent on during the kickstarter. The low end ship was like 30.00 to 40.00 bucks and it was the Aurora. On the high end you could pick up the Idris corvette, but that ship would set you back a cool 1000.00. They actually sold out of Idris corvette's If I am not mistaken

ItBurn wrote on Jun 22, 2013, 19:41:What the hell are you talking about. It's not F2P. It's a 60$ game. No one has ever said that doing a worldwide server and microtransactions was the only way to do it. The only way to do it was to kickstart it, which is already done...

The single player campaign is a wing commander style series of missions, yes, but you can still play the sandbox game alone. There will be tons of things to do, but probably no main quest line.

Read my post and you'll know why CoD would be mentioned in a news post about a space sim :p

So where is this information on SP you guys keep touting, I haven't seen anything in print anywhere that spells it all out in black and white. You're just saying what you think it'll be. And you obviously didn't watch the interview I linked because he states unequivocally that the MP portion of the game is freemium. You'll have to buy everything either by grinding credits or paying real money for them. Those are your options.

1badmf wrote on Jun 22, 2013, 19:27:encouraging stuff, but then again, from someone with CR's track record, if anyone's earned the benefit of the doubt it's him. of course that's never gonna derail someone who bought a ticket on the hate train, nor the conductor of said train (Cutter XD).

actually this guy might have a case. If I am not mistaken this guy left ubisoft to make the game 1666 and THQ was his publisher. When THQ went belly up Ubisoft bought the publishing rights and from the way it looks pulled the plug on his game soon after they gained the publishing rights.

Verno wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 08:48:I'd much rather take faster loading times on the games I do use than waiting an hour to play some game I might never play again anyway.

The thing is, load times on modern games are really pretty minimal once you bypass the mandatory intros. Games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands 2 and Dishonored load in seconds. Obviously an SSD would be much faster still but I consider it more important to be able to launch any game I choose, rather than having to constantly juggle games between drives.Especially when most games I'll play for the 8-30hrs it takes to complete them and probably not go back to them for years. I've only got 50GB free on my SSD and all my SATA ports are in use. Plus Valve only recently added the ability to install games to different locations - before it was a complicated process involving symlinks, which would have to be reconfigured each time one reinstalls Windows.

It's only possible to keep a handful of games on an SSD and to do that you have to constantly juggle games back and forwards. I use Steam because it is less hassle that traditional installs and I don't want to make lots more work for myself for minimal gain.

Grifter wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 13:34:actually the problem was not megatextures technology that worked perfectly fine. The problem with his game was that he had to compress the textures to get them on to a format that people could actually realistically use.

That's not actually true. Carmack revealed that the source textures were no higher quality, hence why the high resolution texture pack he originally talked up was scrapped. Further, the issue with megatextures is that there is no detail texture when you get close - they only look good from afar and Carmack admitted optimising the game for consoles, which is 720p. The game was a trainwreck from conception.

MajorD wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 15:08:But, but.....look, it runs at a silky smooth 60FPS on both PC and console platforms.

Exactly. Anyone can get a game to run at 60fps if they scrap demanding features like high resolution textures, dynamic lights and making objects that consist of more than 10 polygons.

actually you are wrong Carmack admitted that the final build of Rage was 1tb. Carmack also admitted that Rage looks great if you have the 1tb of textures to go with it. The problem was in the compression. They compressed a 1 tb game down to 25 gigs. Think about what that would do to the texture quality.

(The asker was disappointed Rage wasn't a "300 gig" download from steam) (Big thing for PCs, 1TB of Rage could be on a server, high-quality textures streamed in real-time exactly at what the player is looking) Carmack already experimented with it, works better than anyone would expect. Technical barriers, needs a lot of servers and bandwidth Planned, will hopefully get supported in future projects (D4)

where are the sources for the ish you are talking, I would like to see it

Creston wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 12:21:No mod is ever going to be able to fix that clusterfuck that is megatexture, but who knows, maybe some enterprising soul will create a race game in Rage, since the racing part was the only thing I really enjoyed. And it really bugged me that once you've won all of them "Har har, you can't race anymore!"

actually the problem was not megatextures technology that worked perfectly fine. The problem with his game was that he had to compress the textures to get them on to a format that people could actually realistically use.

THe final build of Rage was over 1 terabyte of data and almost all of it was textures. What do you think is going to happen if you compress 1 tb of textures down to 25gigs of data. Your textures resolution is going to be severly downgraded and thats what happened here. I am looking forward to the mod tools because I am sure someone is going to release A high res texture pack at some point that will show what Rage should have looked like before the compression destroyed the textures

It wasn't retroactive. So, when DLC was released for Crysis 2 and DA2 they were removed from Steam; Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins both came before the change, which related to the addition of F2P titles on Steam.

If that's true, then why are Dirt 3 and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record still available on Steam? Both of those games have DLC that is still only available through GFWL and was released after both Crysis 2 and DA2 were pulled.

It just doesn't really make any sense.

Release date doesn't mean the date contracts were signed. There could be months difference between. I'd imagine the paperwork should be in order prior to a game's actual release to avoid extra delay.

For instance, what if those games still there (such as dirt 2) had signed old version contracts and ended up delaying the release date until after the other games were removed? Even if no delays at all happened, if one company got the paperwork settled a year ahead of release and the other company was tardy and only got the paperwork signed weeks before release, that would explain it.

Another thought, perhaps there's exceptions if the DLC is exclusive to GfWL, which it appears to be the case for both Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR (I don't own either so I don't know for sure, I only spent a few mins googling about it). Valve may not want to tangle with MS over this. In contrast, the DLC for DA2 on PC was through bioware/EA's special store as I recall.

My question is why is it okay for Valve to be greedy about demanding a chunk of profits from DLC they don't fund development on, but EA is oh so evil for wanting to get more of a foothold into the digital distribution space?

This is why I said gamers are hypocrites. At the end of the day it's a business. EA, Valve, Activision, TakeTwo are all in it for the money, none of them deserve any more adoration than any of the rest of em imo.

You have to understand dlc on the pc to understand why valve has taken the stance it has taken. Most dlc on pc games come thru a patch or were present in the game when launched.(most however come thru a patch). What EA is essentially doing is using Steam to provide the dlc in the form of a patch, and then locking out valve from any profits from the dlc by requiring the purchase for dlc to be made in game thru a vendor other than valve. It's not evil in valve's case EA is patching there games thru steam with dlc but not allowing valve to profit in anyway shape or form from providing the patch with the dlc on it.

Boohoo, So Gabe has a few less steaks and cheeseburgers, Valve isn't funding the DLC, why should they be entitled a cut from it? They're ALL greedy, putting any developer/publisher up on a pedestal as some holy bastion to gaming is silly.

Your logic makes no sense. Valve is providing the content to all of its customers but are not entitled to any of the profits?????

With your way of thinking than every game that is put on steam valve should not see a profit from, the devs should receive all the money for there games and valve should do this from the kindness of there heart

You seem to be very unhappy with valve wanting to see a profit from the dlc, but let me ask you this? why are you not unhappy with developers that are charging for dlc when in the past these very same items in 75% of dlc was once provided for free from devs.

It wasn't retroactive. So, when DLC was released for Crysis 2 and DA2 they were removed from Steam; Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins both came before the change, which related to the addition of F2P titles on Steam.

If that's true, then why are Dirt 3 and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record still available on Steam? Both of those games have DLC that is still only available through GFWL and was released after both Crysis 2 and DA2 were pulled.

It just doesn't really make any sense.

Release date doesn't mean the date contracts were signed. There could be months difference between. I'd imagine the paperwork should be in order prior to a game's actual release to avoid extra delay.

For instance, what if those games still there (such as dirt 2) had signed old version contracts and ended up delaying the release date until after the other games were removed? Even if no delays at all happened, if one company got the paperwork settled a year ahead of release and the other company was tardy and only got the paperwork signed weeks before release, that would explain it.

Another thought, perhaps there's exceptions if the DLC is exclusive to GfWL, which it appears to be the case for both Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR (I don't own either so I don't know for sure, I only spent a few mins googling about it). Valve may not want to tangle with MS over this. In contrast, the DLC for DA2 on PC was through bioware/EA's special store as I recall.

My question is why is it okay for Valve to be greedy about demanding a chunk of profits from DLC they don't fund development on, but EA is oh so evil for wanting to get more of a foothold into the digital distribution space?

This is why I said gamers are hypocrites. At the end of the day it's a business. EA, Valve, Activision, TakeTwo are all in it for the money, none of them deserve any more adoration than any of the rest of em imo.

You have to understand dlc on the pc to understand why valve has taken the stance it has taken. Most dlc on pc games come thru a patch or were present in the game when launched.(most however come thru a patch). What EA is essentially doing is using Steam to provide the dlc in the form of a patch, and then locking out valve from any profits from the dlc by requiring the purchase for dlc to be made in game thru a vendor other than valve. It's not evil in valve's case EA is patching there games thru steam with dlc but not allowing valve to profit in anyway shape or form from providing the patch with the dlc on it.

For instance, what if those games still there (such as dirt 2) had signed old version contracts and ended up delaying the release date until after the other games were removed? Even if no delays at all happened, if one company got the paperwork settled a year ahead of release and the other company was tardy and only got the paperwork signed weeks before release, that would explain it.

While possible, it seems fairly unlikely that the contracts for Crysis 2 and DA2 were signed after the contracts for Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR. DA2 and Crysis 2 were much higher-profile titles so it seems reasonable that EA and Valve would have finalized the contracts long before release in order to avoid potential launch issues or delays.

Another thought, perhaps there's exceptions if the DLC is exclusive to GfWL, which it appears to be the case for both Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR (I don't own either so I don't know for sure, I only spent a few mins googling about it). Valve may not want to tangle with MS over this. In contrast, the DLC for DA2 on PC was through bioware/EA's special store as I recall.

That's also possible, but why would Valve choose to tangle with EA instead of MS? EA is a much bigger player in the PC gaming market, whereas MS only releases games very rarely and nobody cares about them anyway because they're long-delayed ports of games that flopped on X360.

I think the reason is not because valve decided to pick a fight with EA over Microsoft. I think the reason is that most of those companies that have games on GFWL may not be doing it because they like GFWL but it maybe the nature of there contracts with GFWL. Most likely codemasters and Capcom and rocksteady as well as Epic signed for multi game deals with microsoft which included dlc. The games from these companies most likely got exceptions because there contract obligations with Microsoft predate, the current policies of valve and valve understood that. With EA on the other hand even before the fallout with valve and EA, EA games had a tendency to appear on Steam at the last minute. You could preorder EA games months in advance on other digital download outlets but,there games would always appear on Steam at the last minute. That would explain why valve removed them. EA probably signed the contracts but did not read the fine print. This is most likely why there games got taken down

I do believe that these systems might make a showing at E3 but to be out by Christmas 2012 is just plain ridiculous. First off it takes about 2 years to make a AAA title.Where are the dev kits for these systems I have not heard any dev receiving dev kits for xbox 720 or the ps4.

In the past we usually hear about rumored specs long before we even see a console. (it has been quiet on that front)

If they did manage to bring both or one of these systems out this winter then it would be with a few first party games and a bunch of xbox360 and ps3 ports.

Actually Starting out as PC being the lead platform and then switching to console actually makes a lot of sense. They are able to take advantage of all the technology and capabilities that the pc has to offer, But there will come a point where your going to have to figure out how you are going to get that PC game on a console and have it playable and look somewhat decent. I am a pc gamer and I have no problem with this approach because its sound.

EddieTheHack wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 17:33:Crytek used the money from their early success with farcry to rapidly grow the company. Part of their business model is becoming a middleware provider similar to Epic. CE1 never did anything aside from being used as a base for Dunia - which Ubisoft owns fully. CE2 got exactly 1 third party license and that game did a bunch of nothing. Crytek did 2 in house titles using 2 teams: Warhead and Crysis - they sold decently enough but not well enough to float a studio that has grown to 5 branches through buyouts. Whatever cash they had they spent on growing the company. CE3 is getting used for their in house titles only and has not landed a single AAA studio license. Crysis 2 did not sell very well aside from initial shipments and was a financial disappointment given how much hype and resources went into it - not even a year later and the game is effectively dead. Crysis 2 sold 835K units on 360, 590K units on PS3 and 210K on PC. That's a grand total of 1.635 million units. Warhead alone almost did that just on the PC. Crytek can not be in a fiscally stable position. They spent scads of money buying out other developers and have spent scads of money trying to fix CE3 and get the industry to use it - and its all be for nothing. Now they are building games to order from a 3rd party? If they are not nearly broke they will be soon. EA does own crysis. Its theirs and they control it. The Yerli brothers are idiots when it comes to business. Crytek would rather buy studios than self finance future projects and remain independent and stable. They could not float the 30-50 million it takes to make a AAA game on their own because of idiotic management decision rooted in staggering arrogance on the part of the Yerli brothers. They could have done something amazing, but instead they have been reduced to turning tricks for second rate publishers.

I think the article about consoles losing relevance is utter garbage. The problem is not that tablets and phones are overtaking consoles. The problem is that this generation of consoles has been out for more than 5 years now. The market for new console sales has reached saturation point and everyone whom wanted or intended to buy a console has one at this point.

What the article does clearly show is that the casual gaming market(people whom are not traditional gamers, women and the elderly)are buying games on there tablets and there phones and facebook. This is not because they bought these devices to play games but found that they could buy games on them once they purchased these devices for other uses. The fact that most of these games on these devices are less than 5 dollars point to the fact that many of these game purchases maybe spur of the moment purchases as opposed to actual intended purchases that are more common in traditional gaming.

What the article does show is that the casual gaming market for consoles may have been in fact a fad or bubble and not really a permenant staple in the traditional gaming market.

In other words the casual gaming market is becoming its own segment completly seperate from that of the traditional gaming market and its going to cater to a competely different group of individuals.